Ina Garten Adds These 3 Chocolates To Her Chocolate Loaf Cake, And So Should You

If you're looking for a simple yet elegant dessert, your first stop should be one of Ina Garten's cookbooks. The Barefoot Contessa has a knack for turning simple bakes like pies, cookies, and quickbreads into something truly special just by adding a few extra, sometimes decadent, ingredients. Whether it's adding a sprinkle of sea salt on chocolate chip cookies or whisking in some flavorful crystalized ginger to elevate a carrot cake frosting, her additions always have a purpose — to upgrade the dish without overpowering it. Take for instance her recipe for chocolate loaf cake, which incorporates three different types of chocolate. In addition to cocoa powder, which you might expect, Garten adds bittersweet chocolate and semisweet chocolate chips, which are a trifecta of flavor that turns an everyday recipe into something decidedly indulgent.

Any baker will tell you that it's a little tricky to go about adding ingredients to recipes, however, so if you want to follow Garten's lead for boosting the chocolate in your next loaf, don't just dump everything into the bowl at the same time. Instead, Garten combines the cocoa powder and bittersweet chocolate with boiling water first, which allows the former to bloom and the latter to melt. This can intensify the flavor and create a super-charged chocolate base. 

The beauty of Ina Garten's triple-threat approach to chocolate loaf cake is that each type of chocolate brings something to the table. The bittersweet chocolate, which is chopped before it's melted, gives the bake a creamy quality that can't be achieved with just cocoa powder alone. The powder, however, gives the cake a deep chocolatey flavor that permeates every inch of the cake and lends it a rich color. The cocoa brand that Garten always recommends is Pernigotti, which is a Dutch processed powder with a high fat content (most store-bought powders have 10% to 24% fat). Finally, there are the semisweet chocolate chips, which keep their shape when they're baked and add a textural contrast to the soft crumb of the cake, giving you an extra burst of flavor with each bite.

Three kinds of chocolate aren't the only trick up Garten's sleeve, however. To get an even deeper, darker flavor, she adds a teaspoon of instant coffee granules to the hot water used to melt the chocolate and bloom the cocoa. This is a technique she uses often, including in her game-changing chocolate cake, which adds depth and amplifies the sweetness. Because there's only a teaspoon, you won't taste any coffee flavor — just a rich, delicious mouthful of chocolate.